Dynamics Of Capital Structure

This book examines the capital structure dynamics in Indian MSMEs, offering empirical evidence to better understand the financial practices within entrepreneurial settings. Altaf and Shah in this book assess the financing pattern of Indian MSMEs, response of capital structure determinants to different macroeconomic states, links between working capital and capital structure, cash flow volatility and capital structure and also the impact of credit risk on capital structure and firm performance relationship. This book enthuses the audience looking to understand newer dynamics of capital structure and its interplay in the Indian MSMEs.

This paper examines the dynamic properties of capital structure in a state-space framework. A system of stochastic differential equations is used to specify the dynamics for a firm's debt-to-equity ratio and the determinants of capital structure. The framework addresses statistical issues such as measurement error, missing data and endogeneity. There are several important results. First, firms gradually adjust their capital structure to a firm-specific, time-varying target, as opposed to a fixed level or industry average. Second, the rate at which they revert back to the target depends on several factors: the current position of their leverage relative to the target, their industry, and their financial health. Finally, the statistical issues have a significant impact on the results and subsequent conclusions. The primary economic conclusion is that observed financing behavior may be driven by concerns over credit-worthiness and access to external funds.

The way in which leverage and its expected dynamics impact on firm valuation is very different from what is assumed by the traditional static capital structure framework. Recent work that allows the firm to restructure its debt over time proves to be able to explain much of the observed cross-sectional and time-series variation in leverage, while static capital structure predictions do not. The purpose of this book is to re-characterize the firm’s valuation process within a dynamical capital structure environment, by drawing on a vast body of recent and more traditional theoretical insights and empirical findings on firm evaluation, also including asset pricing literature, offering a new setting in which practitioners and researchers are provided with new tools to anticipate changes in capital structure and setting prices for firm’s debt and equity accordingly.

This paper uses a dynamic unrestricted capital structure model to examine the determinants of the private companies' target financial leverage and the speed of adjustment to it in two transition economies, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria. We explicitly model the adjustment of companies' leverage to a target leverage, and this target leverage is itself explained by a set of factors. The panel data methodology combines cross-section and time-series information. The results indicate that the Bulgarian corporate credit markets were less supply-constrained than those of the Czech Republic during the period under investigation. Bulgarian companies adjusted much faster to the target leverage than Czech firms. The speed of adjustment related positively to the distance between target and observed ratio for Bulgarian companies while the relationship was neutral for Czech companies. The conservative policies of Czech banks and the exposure control were likely responsible for the slower adjustment among the larger companies while the opposite were true for Bulgarian banks and companies. Published in: Economics of Planning vol 37, no 1 (2004) pp. 25-45, ISSN 0013-0451.

The firm s financing policy is not only influenced by trade-off between the tax advantages of debt financing, recapitalization and financial distress costs but also by exogenous financial developments and liberalization policies. In recent years after the recurrent financial crisis the leverage behaviour has attracted considerable interest as the high debt ration signals out a major cause of financial crisis. The book extends the theoretical study of optimal capital structure by introducing the financial development in the corporate sector in a deterministic capital structure theory. The firm s financing behaviour is described in a dynamic model with firm specific variables and the state of financial liberalization. The study s aim is to propose and test a natural explanation of how financial liberalization might affect financial leverage. If liberalization policy has a significant linkage with financial leverage and it tends to increase use of debt relative to equity financing, this will this will have implications for the likelihood of bankruptcy and for the pace and amplitude of business cycle fluctuations.

In this paper we explore the process of convergence to firms' target leverage ratios. Using a unique dataset of micro, small, medium and large firms, we find that this process is very fast, most notably for smaller firms. We further explore these results by analyzing different convergence trajectories. We find that firms that are currently below their target leverage ratio take more time to reach this target than firms with a symmetrical departure point. Furthermore, smaller firms are able to converge faster to their optimal capital structure, regardless of whether they have to increase or decrease their current leverage ratios. Using a duration analysis framework, we also find that firms that have to increase debt to reach their target leverage ratio take more time to do so if they have more free cash-flow.

Empirical Capital Structure reviews the empirical capital structure literature from both the cross-sectional determinants of capital structure as well as time-series changes.